Back in November last year The Cultural Landscape Foundation held the Second Wave of Modernism II: Landscape Complexity and Transformation Conference at MoMA in New York. Various landscape architects and urbanists such as James Corner, Michael Van Valkenburgh, Raymond Jungles, Kathryn Gustafson, Gary Hilderbrand and many more gave lectures on Transformations of Residential and Metropolitan spaces. Now the videos of the lectures have been published with over 4 hours of interesting videos about the transforming the urban environments that we live, design, create and manage everyday. Each Video is approximately 20-25 minutes long so you can watch each one individually or cue the whole set.

Learning environments are constantly evolving to stay in stride with the world around us. The factors that influence how and where we choose to educate our future generation are many. With the pace of the world’s technological innovation, and the increasing level of convenience and distraction it provides, there is a realistic concern that people, kids especially, risk losing a tangible connection and respect for the natural world. As a landscape architect, being asked to shape an educational environment, the first responsibility is to create a healthy, safe and inspirational setting. Secondly, it is an opportunity to bring the natural world out of the background, and back into focus in a fun and inspiring way.

A prevalent problem facing cities and regions is inadequate stormwater infrastructure. Sixteen billion gallons of raw sewage get dumped into Philadelphia’s rivers and streams each year after rain events. Because wet-weather flow is a dispersed problem, it has become increasingly clear that it requires a dispersed solution. Consequently, cities have started to explore alternatives for stormwater capture and treatment that are decentralized and incremental, rather than a system-wide upgrade. Individual lots in aggregate can have a significant impact on water quality. With funds being directed towards infrastructure rather than recreational or public space per se, we must explore creative ways to use infrastructural improvements as open space amenities.